Last Saturday we have been in the presentation of a new Convivium of Slow Food in Portugal, in the small village of Maçussa (in Ribatejo, near Cartaxo). The leader of the Convivium of Ribatejo and Oeste is Adolfo Henriques (in the picture talking about the goals of this group), producer of a delicious"Chévre" (in Granja dos Moinhos) and owner of the restaurant "O Baile", in Maçussa. To know more about Slow Food, take a look in the website www.slowfood.com .

For the first time, we did several "lagares" in the Douro, the most part with Touriga Franca, one of my favorite grapes from the Douro wines. One of them already finished the fermentation. My son António came with me to see the work in the "lagares". These pictures have been done in the first "pisa" (to tread on the grapes with the feet) of one of the "lagares", called "corte do lagar". Fernando, Tiago, Bruno and Fernando are the 4 boys who normally do this work, at the end of the day, after the school.

This is the vineyard of Vale da Sobreira, one of my favoured in Mouraz. Sometimes I think if I like more the Dão or the Douro. Maybe my heart slams more for the Dão. It's true that the Douro is very dramatic, dazzling, spectacular, but the Dão it's mysterious and have a more discreet beauty, with the pines and eucalyptuses forest (the dark and magic forest surrouding the vines as my son says, where we can find dwarfs and elfs). That's why the wines from the Dão are the most interesting wines in the world...

Today was the last day of the harvest in the Dão. A sunny day with 26º, a beautiful blue sky, the perfect day to finish. António, the father of António, with almost 87 years old, had came to pick up the grapes of Touriga-Nacional in Vale da Sobreira vineyard.

At home now, after 3 days doing the harvest in the Douro. At the same time, António continues the harvest in the Dão. My son António came with me, 3 days climbing and climbing, and doing naps under the shadows of the olive trees and making picnics...